


Dayenu

by FoxGlade



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Family Drama, Future Fic, Multi, Pesach | Passover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 22:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18600349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxGlade/pseuds/FoxGlade
Summary: It's almost insulting, how many times Ben hears the phrase “I can't believe how grown up you are!” thrown at him since arriving at the ancestral New Jersey family home, considering he's not even the youngest of his cousins.Although it's not like he doesn't get it - four years ago, the actual youngest was getting the third degree for her recent marriage, and now even her young daughter is old news to the family. Ben turning up with a kid of his own and a ring on his finger that he may have, technically, definitely accidentally, forgotten to let his extended family know about? That's what everyone wants to focus on.(Ben goes home for Passover and accidentally starts some good old family holiday drama.)





	Dayenu

**Author's Note:**

> hello all!! its been too long!! so i'll try and keep the notes short, because damn, this was gonna be 4k words lmao
> 
> passover is the most celebrated jewish holiday, much more so than hanukkah - [here's a good primer for it](https://reformjudaism.org/passover-customs-and-rituals) to understand the references in this fic. ive done my research and talked to friends, but im not jewish, so any corrections and criticisms are welcome!
> 
> there's a short conversation in here about sammy being grey-ace that was riffed from fandom legend neversaydie's fic Thaw. also, ben is absolutely nb in all my fics but i made it more obvious in this one, in honour of the latest ep!!
> 
> Dayenu is a Hebrew word that essentially means "it would have been enough for us", and literally translates to "our enough". this takes place about four months after the future section of Wish You All The Best and will probably make more sense if you read that first. but lbr if you're reading this, you've probably read that one lmao

It's almost insulting, how many times Ben hears the phrase “I can't believe how grown up you are!” thrown at him since arriving at the ancestral New Jersey family home, considering he's not even the youngest of his cousins. Although it's not like he doesn't get it - four years ago, the actual youngest, Claudia, was getting the third degree for her recent marriage, and now even her young daughter is old news to the family. Ben turning up with a kid of his own and a ring on his finger that he may have, technically, definitely accidentally, forgotten to let his extended family know about? That's what everyone wants to focus on.

But come on. It's one thing to invite most of your hometown to your wedding when they've heard every relationship drama and milestone played out on the radio every night, and another thing entirely to inform your New Jersey and Michigan cousins about your impending polyamorous nuptials.

“I thought this holiday was about freedom!” he finally snaps after Auntie Trisha tugs on his ponytail and asks if his wife approves of his long hair. At least she hasn't realised that the bee-print blouse he's wearing is a little too feminine to be considered ‘men's clothing’, probably by way of being raided from his wife's closet. “Where's my freedom, huh? Freedom from interrogation?”

“It's also about questions, dummy,” his cousin Allie calls from where she's keeping her youngest two from stabbing each other with coloured pencils.

“If you can't connect criticisms of my hair to the Exodus story, then they're not allowed,” Ben retorts.

“Leave him be,” Betty says, smoothing his hair back fondly. Ben bats her away half-heartedly, still bouncing Bebe on his hip. Her face is screwed up into an adorable little scowl, only just now calmed down after the stream of new people - just his luck that she's inherited the grumpiest of her parents’ social dispositions.

The Cooper Family Annual Passover has been a tradition since before Ben was born, despite only being held once every four years, and also despite no one in the family bearing the last name Cooper anymore. His grandmother's mom had lost the name with marriage but stubbornly kept it in her only child's middle name, which was passed onto the children of the family after that, at least one in each branch of the family tree. The current count, if Ben remembers his mom's last update, is six, including Bebe.

“Where is this wife, anyway?” Uncle Michael asks, coming up behind him to clap him on the shoulder. “Wanted a break from the baby, I'll bet. Emily, wasn't it?”

“She wanted to come,” Ben starts, but spots a familiar face in the crowd of cousins. “Hey! Claudia!”

“Ben!” she calls back, and slowly struggles towards him, dragging a suitcase and a wife holding a young child with her.

“Oh, let me help,” Betty says, and then turns to Uncle Michael and says, “Michael, go help them.”

“Bossy,” Michael says mildly, but goes to his youngest daughter anyway. “I want to hear about that wife, Ben!”

“A wife? Ben?” Claudia laughs. She gladly gives her suitcase over to her father so she can turn to her own wife, Bella, and take the child from her arms and balance her on her hip. “That'll be the day.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he says, and then immediately has to shush Bebe when she startles. Claudia’s eyes widen as she takes in the baby sitting on Ben's hip, the two cousins almost mirror images of each other for a moment.

“And a kid?” she says. “Christ, didn't you grow up quick?”

“You are literally a year younger than me, shut up,” Ben snaps. He bounces Bebe and adds, “Why does everyone keep saying that, seriously? I was in a serious relationship last time we were all here, I had a good job, what is, what is this attack on my reputation?”

“Oh, yeah, that Sammy guy, right?” Claudia asks. If he weren't holding a baby Ben would've flailed in her face.

“I wasn't _dating Sammy_ , oh my God, this is why I didn't invite him,” he moans. “I almost did, this time, and then I remembered how you guys put Madeline through twenty goddamn questions when Daniel brought her--”

“Language,” Betty says sharply, and Ben mutters an apology. “Thank you. Stop being rude to your cousin and say hello, for goodness sake.”

“Hi, Claudia,” he says in a monotone, and then more enthusiastically, “Hey, Bella. And hi, Valerie!” He taps the little girl in Claudia's arms on the nose, grinning at the wide smile she gives him. “Heard a lot about you. I’m your uncle Ben, and this is your cousin Bebe!”

“Hiii,” Valerie sing-songs. Bebe, having progressed to proper words only in the comfort and safety of her own home, merely hides her face in Ben's side.

“She's a little shy,” he whispers to Valerie, who giggles. Claudia rolls her eyes.

“You're not getting out of it that easily,” she says, but lets it go in favour of kissing Uncle Michael on the cheek. “Hey, Dad. Is Sarah here yet?”

“Trouble with the kids,” he says wisely. Claudia grimaces and nods, glancing back at Ben for a second.

“Cute shirt, homegirl,” she says, with just enough sarcasm for it to come off as a joke to everyone around them.

Ben didn't actually meet Claudia until he was fourteen. He'd been born between her and her older sister Sarah, so they weren't the closest in age, but he'd always felt more comfortable with her than any of the other cousins. It was probably more to do with their mutual love of flannel shirts, musical theatre and dramatic eyeliner than anything, but Claudia being the designated Gay Cousin seemed to gain more significance as he grew older and more self-aware.

She also remains to this day the only cousin shorter than him, which is probably the main reason for their friendship.

“Alright, you lot!” Auntie Trisha calls out, voice silencing the babble of the family crowded on the front lawn of the house. “We got three hours until sundown, and I intend to spend that drinking beer. So if anyone wants to join me…”

The herd begins to move. Ben takes the opportunity to slip away, but not before Claudia gives him the ‘I'm watching you’ hand gesture.

It's an ill omen, because he's barely in the door before Bebe starts huffing in a way that's gonna develop into a full-on sob very quickly. “Hey, hey, sweetie, c'mere,” he says soothingly, lifting her into a hug. She puts her face in his neck and sniffs pathetically. “You tired? You were so good on the plane, you probably deserve a nap, huh?”

“Need a hand?” someone asks from the crowd. His cousin Daniel emerges and leans against the wall with him, out of the stream of people heading for the living room. Talk about an exodus.

“She's just tired, I think,” Ben says. Daniel is known amongst the cousins for his magic touch with calming down fussy babies and upset toddlers, despite having no kids of his own, but Bebe isn't the best with new people, as she's clearly demonstrated so far, so he's not eager to hand her off just yet. “I'll keep a hold of her for now, but stay on standby.”

“Roger that,” Daniel grins. He puts his hands on his hips and observes the last of the crowd - Allie's husband has both of their twins under his arms, stomping around while they shriek with joy. “Brave move, coming without backup.”

“Oh, trust me, it wasn't by choice,” Ben says, rolling his eyes. He rocks Bebe a little as he complains, “All of Emily's staff are either on sick leave or holiday leave already, which is crazy because none of them are Jewish, they're just starting their Easter thing early, and Sammy couldn't come or there wouldn't be anyone at the station. I mean, Jack offered to broadcast for us but I didn't wanna mess up his sleep schedule just for two or three nights of work, right? Honestly, Jack was the only one who could've come, so maybe I should've…”

He trails off when he realises Daniel is wearing the polite expression of someone who has no possible way of understanding what he's hearing. “Mom is happy to help. It'll be fine,” he says instead. “Bebe's a sweetheart, aren't you, baby?”

Bebe sighs noisily. “Yeah, you learned that from Sammy, didn't you,” he coos. Daniel shakes his head with a grin.

“I swear Grace is more like Allie every day,” he says. “Strong genes, huh? She looks just like you,” he adds, nodding his chin towards Bebe. Ben just nods, and there's an almost awkward pause before Daniel says, “So, Sammy's the husband? That's the guy you work with, yeah?”

If he'd always felt most comfortable with Claudia, Ben's always felt the least comfortable with Daniel. Not that he doesn't like the guy - they were both obsessed with Star Trek for one glorious Passover, and spent hours after the seder discussing ethics and morality in the Federation. But as the only two male cousins, they’ve always been lumped together, and it's not exactly a contrast that favours Ben. As young adults, Daniel liked engineering, boats and planes and motorbikes. Ben liked Broadway and badgering Claudia to paint his nails. Daniel's comfort with the norms of heterosexual masculinity had only ever served to make Ben seem more out of place, and the fact that he could never seem to understand why Ben couldn't find that same comfort just drove them further apart.

“Uh,” Ben says. Daniel looks painfully earnest. He's a good guy, really, but sometimes he's so straight it's depressing. “Yeah, we work together. Hey, I think Mom grabbed Bebe's blanket, do you mind helping me track her down..?”

“Oh! Yeah, sure,” Daniel says, and Ben probably isn't imagining the relief in his voice. “Just wanted to use me for my height, I get it.”

“Fuck off,” Ben mutters, but without heat. Living with the 6’4 giant that is Jack Wright has forced him to learn to pick his battles.

Just about every chair has been dragged into the living room by now. The aunts and uncle sit comfortably on the couch, cousins perch on any vaguely stable surface, and kids sprawl across the floor or sit in laps, all presided over by the matriarch of the family, watching her brood with a sharp eye from her throne - the ancient burgundy armchair, older than Ben by far, and probably not much younger than Betty.

Sarah Arnold is a marble bust of a woman, Ben has always thought. Small, weathered, and absolutely immovable. She gives one of the twins a light slap on the shoulder as he runs past shrieking, and then looks up and meets his eye as he slips through the open doorway.

“Benjamin!” she says crisply. Her voice isn’t particularly loud, but it cuts through the chaos with practiced ease. “Let me meet my youngest great-grandchild.”

Obediently he manoeuvres around various piles of relatives. He has to actually step over one of the kids at some point, but thankfully it’s Allie’s oldest, Grace, who is a sensible young girl and doesn’t attempt to grab his ankles and trip him. Either of the twins would have, and from what he knows of Sarah Junior’s kids, he should just be grateful they haven’t arrived yet.

“Hi, Bubbe,” Ben says. He kisses her cheek before carefully perching on the arm of her throne and pulling Bebe into his lap. “How have you been?”

“Inconsolable, knowing my youngest grandchild doesn’t care about me,” she replies, not looking particularly put out. “No invitation to this wedding of yours, and no word of my very first great-grandchild being born. Don’t think your mother won’t be getting her hide tanned later for keeping secrets, but at least she had the decency to tell me before you showed up with this little thing in tow.”

“She’s not the first! You have, like, five other great-grandkids, Bubbe, it’s not that big a deal,” Ben complains. “And I’m not even the youngest grandchild! Claudia’s a year younger than me!”

“Ah, I forget, you’re just so small,” Bubbe murmurs. She pinches his cheek and Ben resigns himself to it.

“She’s shorter than me, too,” he adds. Bubbe’s face grows stony.

“Don’t argue,” she says sharply. Ben resists the urge to roll his eyes, knowing it would only earn him a tug on the ear. “Now, this is little Betty, is that right?”

“Bebe,” Ben corrects. He strokes his daughter’s hair, gently trying to get her face out from where it’s buried in his shirt again. “I mean, yeah, Betty, but we’re calling her Bebe. Hey, sweetie, you wanna meet your bubbe? She’s your grandma’s mom. She really wants to meet you!”

Reluctantly, Bebe looks out at her great-grandmother. Her little curls are all over her face, and she’s still pouting, and she looks _adorable_ , in Ben’s opinion. Bubbe’s face softens a little, so she must think so too. He really should’ve brought a kid along sooner, with how well she’s working as a distraction.

“Hi,” she murmurs. Bubbe smiles gently at her.

“Hello, Bebe,” she says solemnly. “Chag Pesach. Do you know what means?”

Bebe shakes her head. Ben says quietly, “She’s two, Bubbe. We’re busy just teaching her English, let alone Hebrew.”

“Ben Arnold, it is never too early to learn!” Bubbe exclaims. “I’ll bet Claudia’s girl already knows a few words!”

“Okay, I seriously doubt that,” Ben says, but Bubbe ignores him. Typical.

“Chag Pesach mean ‘joyous Passover’,” she explains to a rapt Bebe. “This is your first Passover, I assume?” she asks, although she glares at Ben as she says it. He sighs heavily.

“Come on, Bubbe,” he says. “Mom did a seder last year with us all, and Bebe wasn’t even born the Passover before that.”

“Well, I’m very glad you’re with us this year,” Bubbe says, ignoring Ben again. He rolls his eyes and flinches automatically, but Bubbe just gives him a gently slap on the knee before continuing to Bebe, “Can you say ‘chag Pesach’?”

Ben wants to protest - Bebe isn’t exactly delayed in the speech department, but she seems to prefer taking her time with new words. But he stays quiet, watching Bebe’s little face twist as she thinks deeply about this request.

“Tak pesik,” she says finally. Bubbe nods encouragingly.

“That’s very good,” she says. Apparently satisfied with this encounter, she then rounds on Ben. “So, who is this ‘us all’, where is this wife? Or is it a husband now, you know I can’t keep track.”

“Bubbe,” Ben complains, but is thankfully saved by a chorus of greetings as the final family member.

His cousin Sarah walks into the living room like Moses himself, kids and cousins parting before her as she heads serenely to Bubbe’s side. “Chag Pesach, Bubbe,” she says sweetly, with perfect pronunciation, before kissing her cheek and pulling up a miraculously untaken chair to sit at her side. Ben shifts uncomfortably on his perch and scowls. “Sorry we’re late, Alex wanted to pick up some Manischewitz.” She looks around the room again, and then suddenly seems to recognise Ben’s existence. “Oh, what the fuck, Ben? Who’s kid is that?”

Usually it takes at least until the second step of the seder for her Perfect Daughter persona to break, so at least Ben can feel proud over that. “She’s _my_ kid, do you think I just stole someone’s kid?” he demands at the same time Bubbe flicks her collarbone.

“Ow, Bubbe!” Sarah complains, once again the petulant fifteen year old Ben met at his first family Passover. “And it could be one of the cousin’s kids, I don’t know, maybe one of _them_ forgot to mention they _had a child_.”

“Mom put it on Facebook!” Ben protests.

“Children,” Bubbe says, voice steely. They both obediently fall silent. “Sarah, worry about your own children, they should have been wishing me a joyous Passover fifteen minutes ago. Ben, your mother has been trying to get your attention for the last ten seconds, what kind of son are you?”

“What?” Sure enough, Betty is standing in the doorway to the kitchen, behind his cousin Mandy and waving Bebe's blanket. “Oh, right. Sorry, Bubbe, I'll be right back.”

“I want to hear about this whomever you are married to!” Bubbe calls to his retreating back.

“And he's married too?” Sarah adds. “Ben, you owe me a story!”

Apparently he owes everyone a story. He gathers Bebe up in his arms again and picks his way through the living room to join his mother in the kitchen.

“Thanks,” he says when she holds the blanket out, and Bebe takes it quickly. It's barely bigger than her now, and they should really start weaning her off it soon, but it's a gentle yellow with ducklings embroidered around the edges, and Sammy and Jack had gotten it for her before she was born, and she's just super cute with it, alright, so Ben's letting her hang onto it as long as she wants. He pats her hair as she nestles against his chest, blanket tucked under her chin, and says, “Mom, I thought you said you told everyone about Bebe?”

“You know I don't go on Facebook,” she sighs. “I called Trisha, and she said she'd tell the family. But you never did tell me what you wanted everyone to know about, well. The partner thing.”

Betty Arnold is a goddamn saint, and Ben's always known that. At every moment of self-realisation in Ben's life, Betty has always been three steps ahead, having already caught on, done her research, and settled into calm acceptance. So when he'd finally stuttered out an explanation of what exactly was going on with him and his three best friends, she was of course understanding and delighted, in that mild and wry way she usually is.

“From the day you first started talking about Sammy, I thought, ‘well, we all know how this is going to end’,” she’d remarked. “You really threw me off when you came in two weeks later going on about Emily, so I'm glad I wasn't too far off the mark. Although I gotta say - you keep finding ways to surprise me, kid.”

In the present, Ben weighs up how likely it is that the rest of his family would share her easy acceptance and understanding. He thinks about it for about half a second before a bubble of hysterical laughter forms in his throat. He coughs and says, “I don't wanna - I mean, I know it's tradition for someone to bring their drama to the seder, but I wasn't exactly planning on handing out pamphlets or anything, y'know?”

“So just tell them about Emily,” Betty replies. “You are allowed to talk about her without explaining the whole situation, sweetheart.”

“I know, I know, it's just--” He can feel his voice rising in pitch so he stops and takes a deep breath. Having a small child has really done wonders for helping him contain his Ben-isms. “It feels weird. Not talking about it.”

Betty examines his face for something, Ben doesn't know what. But she seems to find it, because she smiles suddenly, crows-feet fanning out beside her crinkled eyes. “And I'm so happy for that, Benny,” she says quietly. She smooths out one of his ringlets and continues, “We'll be back in King Falls before you know it. Until then…” She pats him on the cheek twice. “Suck it up, kiddo. It's not like you've ever had trouble going on about Emily.”

“Hey,” Ben says mildly. She's right, after all. “Alright, yeah, I'll just talk about Emily. Yeah. She's my wife.”

“Did you forget?” Betty asks, obviously amused. “What is it Lily always says… you dumb, sweet boy.”

“I didn't forget, I'm just. Reminding myself.” Which reminds him of something else. “Oh, shit, Daniel totally thinks I'm married to Sammy. Claudia might too. Oh, man.”

“You'll figure it out,” Betty says wisely. “Now get back in there, kid, before someone drags you back.”

Sarah, her husband, and her kids have all settled by the time Ben rejoins the crowd, meaning she’s leading the main conversation among the adults while Noah, the oldest of the kids, shows off a toy of some sort to the children gathered on the floor. Auntie Trisha is bouncing little Valerie on her knee while talking quietly to Claudia and Bella, Uncle Michael is entertaining the younger of Sarah’s kids, Tilly, and in the midst of all the chaos, Ben finds it very easy to avoid attention and sit himself on the floor in a gap next to Mandy’s seat.

She drifts out of conversation with Sarah and the others gradually, thankfully, giving him a chance to settle Bebe on his lap and tuck her blanket around her properly. She’s fallen asleep properly now, and he can only hope it will stay that way until the seder begins - at least that way he'll have an excuse to duck out of any unwanted conversation.

“Sick of answering questions about the baby yet?” Mandy eventually whispers to him, like they're kids at the synagogue.

“If I say yes, are you gonna ask me more questions?” he whispers back. Mandy makes a _pffbt_ noise and Ben has a weird moment of knowing exactly what he himself sounds like.

“I mean, I'd want to, but I'm not gonna be a dick about it,” she says. “I'm just glad it's you and not me, y'know?”

“What'd you do?” Ben asks, genuinely curious. Mandy is the youngest of Auntie Trisha's kids, just slightly older than Sarah, and therefore in prime position to slip quietly through life in the family, never making waves. Until last Passover, she and Ben had been in the same boat - no serious relationships, steady but unremarkable jobs, and no laudable achievements for their aunts and uncles to fuss over. He'd honestly assumed she'd continued on that path since then, but hey, he's not the only one who can turn up with unexpected news, apparently.

Mandy scrutinises him for a second before biting her lip. “I, uh… hey, you were dating that Sammy guy, right?”

“Why does everyone think that!” Ben hisses. “We weren't dating then, I was dating Emily, why does no one remember that I was dating Emily!”

“Wait, so are you dating him now?” Mandy asks. Ben freezes.

“Uh,” he says. He should just say he's married to Emily. It's not even a lie! But instead he says, “Wait, don't distract me from the hot goss. Why is this relevant to whatever you did?”

Mandy rolls her eyes. “You're so sketchy,” she sighs. “I'm just asking if you're bi.”

“Ohhh,” Ben says. Then, “Yeah, duh, the whole family only found out, like, two Passovers ago. Remember? There was Claudia, making fun of how much I talked about Sammy, and there was me, turning it into a Hallmark Passover movie moment…” Him coming out in front of G-d and Bubbe and everyone had certainly set the standard for drama that year. “Shit, are you bi too? Claudia's gonna be pissed, she was so mad having to share the Gay Cousin title with me, let alone with another cousin.”

“I'm not bi, I--” She breaks off again, glancing around the room. Sarah is still holding court, with the cousins on either side of them paying no attention to this quiet side conversation. “I told Mom I'm aro ace. Uh, aromantic asexual. Do you know..?”

She sounds painfully hopeful. Ben is really glad he can actually field this one. “Yeah, yeah, of course,” he says, and watches the tension visibly drain from her shoulders. “That's like, total no on romance and sex and everything, right?”

“Yeah,” she says, scrubbing her face with her hands. “I mean, for most people, some people - it doesn't matter, I'm the 100% kind. Mom didn't exactly… get it.”

Ben keeps one arm carefully tucked around Bebe while he pats his cousin's knee in what's hopefully a comforting gesture. “That blows,” he says. She snorts into her hands. “She didn't, uh… I know the whole ‘you'll meet the right person someday!’ thing is a bad one.”

“You _know_ she said exactly that,” Mandy complains. Ben winces in sympathy. “And it sucks, because she's really cool with Claudia and Bella, I don't get why she couldn't be cool about _this_. But I shouldn't be surprised, it's not like anyone knows what it is.” She lowers her hands and looks at him side-on. “Kinda surprised you even know, to be honest.”

Ben makes a non-committal humming sound while he weighs up exactly how vague he wants to be for this next bit. “I, uh, I know someone,” he hedges. “He's the… the sometimes asexual? Shit, I googled it at the time, I promise, but it was like three years ago. Like… you know. The sometimes asexual?”

Mandy covers her face with her hands again, but this time it's to hide her laughter. “That sounds like a fucking superhero name,” she squeaks. “Or a porn title.” Ben whacks her on the thigh.

“Shut up, I'm trying to be supportive here!” he says, but he's laughing too.

“Do you mean demi, you weirdo?” she asks. “Or gray ace?”

“Yeah, that one, gray ace,” he says, giving her a brief fingergun. “So like, it's not like I've never met an asexual before. Claudia probably knows a ton about it, she's like, the official Cooper family LGBT encyclopedia. If you tell her she'll probably put together a full on PowerPoint for Auntie Trisha. Fuck it, I'll help, it'll give me something to do, I'm already going crazy missing work.”

Mandy’s laughter slows as he goes on, and by the time he finishes, she's giving him a warm smile. They're the most similar-looking of the cousins, both of them taking after their bubbe's mother, the last Cooper - Ben's seen photos, and either one of them could be her twin. So it's a little unnerving to see his own smile looking back at him, but it's a nice kind of unnerving, at least. “I'll talk to Claudia,” she says quietly, then ruffles his hair quickly, backing off before he can slap her hand away. “And, hey. I'll try and get everyone to back off. You know I've heard three separate people arguing over who you're married to?”

“Oh, I'm aware,” Ben mutters. Mandy stares at him. “What?”

She holds up her hands innocently. “Just thought, y'know, I told you my big secret, the least you could do is tell me what all the damn mystery is about…”

“There's no mystery!” Ben insists. “I married Emily! She's my wife! That's just, it's fine!”

Mandy, wisely, doesn't respond.

 

Setting up the seder is delegated to the cousins, as per usual, all under Bubbe’s watchful eye.

“Don’t use that pillow, there are better ones in the cupboard,” she tells Allie.

“Which cupboard, Bubbe,” Allie sighs from behind her stack of pillows.

“You lived here, you know which cupboard!”

“Not for twenty years, Bubbe!”

Ben folds his assigned napkins and doesn’t engage.

Also as per usual, it takes much longer than it should, so by the time Grace leads the children back inside and announces, with all the solemnity of her eight years, that the sun is going down, it leads to a mad scramble to make sure there’s enough chairs and wine glasses and copies of the haggadah at every placemat.

But everyone manages to settle in by with time to spare until Auntie Trisha's alarm beeps and heralds true sunset, even if there's elbows bumped and feet stepped on. Ben ends up squeezed between his mom and Sarah, Bebe settled on his lap and fully awake, currently fascinated with the delicate engraving on Bubbe's best cutlery set. Her chubby little fingers trace over the lines and flowers, eyes wide.

“She's so cute,” Sarah whispers to him.

“Thanks,” he whispers back. “I'm really glad everyone likes her more than they're mad at me.”

“Aw, no one could stay mad at little Benny,” Sarah says sarcastically, going to pinch his cheek before he slaps her away. “So come on, give me the pictures! We have about thirty seconds and I need something to get me through the first couple of steps, and it's either this or YouTube cat videos.”

Ben obligingly fumbles his phone out of his pocket. He flushes at the lockscreen - it's still a selfie of Jack from the last time he'd stolen Ben's phone, his and Bebe's faces smushed together as she holds up a clumsy peace sign, no doubt carefully instructed by Jack. He flicks past it quickly and finds his photo app, scanning past the masses of selfies in order to find a block of photos of Bebe for Sarah. Wow, there's a _lot_ of selfies. He definitely has to have a talk with everyone about using up all of Ben's storage.

Finally he finds a good string of them, all taken by Emily while he and Sammy were asleep one night, and clicks them open for Sarah. “These are all with Jack,” he says apologetically, although he isn't sure why. “He works from home so he's kind of a house husband, it's been turning him into a dad blogger.” He flicks from Bebe scowling in a ridiculous bee onesie, to Jack holding her up so they're nose to nose, and then to Bebe smacking her hand across Jack's cheek. Sarah muffles her laughter behind one hand.

“If he put those on a blog, I'd read it,” she says. “Talk about eye candy. How'd you get that guy to marry you? Blackmail and bribery?”

And Ben absolutely intends to correct her this time, because he can admit that he hasn't exactly been subtle about Sammy, but he is _not_ adding a third party to the mix. This will not become the low budget Passover family comedy that never was, even if he would absolutely watch that movie.

But he doesn't get the chance, because the phone alarm goes off and the conversation around the table hushes. Auntie Trisha turns the phone off, Bubbe picks up her haggadah and clears her throat, gesturing for Uncle Michael to start pouring the wine.

At the very least, the steps go smoothly. Bubbe leads each part of the hagaddah with everyone responding from their lovingly printed copies, the kids a little louder and slower than the adults, but acceptable. Allie quells a splash fight between her twins during the second step only for it to reignite in the third between Noah and Tilly, both flicking the salt water off their parsley in each other's faces, but it only takes a stern word from Betty to calm them down. Bebe tries to go for Ben's wine at one point and he pointedly moves it away from her grasping fingers and out of reach, handing her a tiny bit of parsley instead.

While she thoughtfully chews on it, Bubbe carefully takes the middle matzah from under its cloth and snaps it into uneven pieces. “We now hold up this broken matzah, which so clearly can never be repaired,” she recites. Ben waits attentively until she finishes, only for her to pass the afikomen to Claudia.

“Why does she get to hide it?” Ben whines as she gets up from her seat. She sticks her tongue out at him and laughs when he kicks her empty chair.

“Last year you hid it on the ceiling fan!” she says.

“So?”

“Noah was four years old!”

“He could've climbed!” Ben retorts. Claudia just ruffles his hair as she leaves. “Stop doing that, I'm older than you!”

“Is she bullying you, Benny?” Uncle Michael asks seriously. Ben scowls as everyone at the table titters.

“It's Ben,” he mutters. As expected, he receives no sympathy.

Sarah nudges his shoulder instead. “Bring your husband along next time, he'll defend your honour,” she says. “And I'll get something nice to look at.”

“Hey,” her own husband says, not unamused, at the same time Daniel says, “Yeah, Sammy sounds nice!”, and Mandy says, “Wait, husband?”

Ben stands abruptly, chair scraping on the floor. “Oh, hey, Bebe is fussing,” he says cheerfully. Bebe squirms a little in his arms, perfectly quiet, as if in disapproval. “I'm just gonna take her for a walk. Don't start the Magid without me! Or do, that's fine too. Okay bye!”

He starts to back away, but Betty grabs his arm before he gets more than a step from the table. “Stop being dramatic, Ben,” she says, a warning in her voice. “Sit down.”

He sits down.

“Sammy? That guy you were seeing?” Sarah asks, clearly bewildered.

“Yeah, they're married now,” Daniel says, then less confidently, “Right?”

“Okay, you definitely told me you married Emily,” Mandy accuses.

Ben just curls around Bebe and puts his head down on the table with a groan. “This is great,” he mutters, “this is exactly what I wanted.”

“Get your head off the table, Benjamin,” he hears his Bubbe snap. He lifts his head automatically. Bubbe's face is stony, but with annoyance, not anger. Ben almost laughs - usually they wait until the fifth step at least to start derailing the seder. He's always been precocious. “I understand you like your dramatics, but the seder table isn’t the place for it, so stop it.”

“Stop what now?” Claudia says, strolling back into the room only a little out of breath, presumably having hidden the afikomen in record time. “Ten bucks says the kids aren't gonna find it, by the way.”

Usually Ben would totally take her up on that, but he's a little too miserable right now for it.

“Do you know who Ben's married to?” Mandy asks. Claudia snorts as she sits back down.

“Wait, does Ben not know?” she replies. “It's not exactly a tough question.” But she meets his eye on the last word, and the despair must be pretty damn visible on his face because something in her voice… falters. He doesn't think he's imagining it - her head tilts a little, her eyebrows quirk. Then her eyes widen.

 _She's the official Cooper family LGBT encyclopedia,_ he thinks dizzily. _Of course she knows about fucking polyamory._

“I'm married to Emily!” he blurts out. There's a noticeable decrease in tension around the table, but his shoulders remain hunched. “Me and Sammy live together, though - I mean, me and Emily live with him and his husband. That's Jack. Sorry, Sarah,” he adds to his cousin. He forces a laugh and says, “I thought it’d be funny to, uh, make people guess. Y'know. Dramatic and everything. I'm sorry, Bubbe.”

Under the table, Betty pats his knee. Any comfort he gets from it is soured by the number of cousins currently rolling their eyes.

Bubbe just sighs deeply, the sigh of someone who has suffered through many teenagers and will suffer them again. “Let's just keep going,” she says, and then clicks her fingers. “Kyle! Luke! Your mother told you about the afikomen, yes? Go on, go find it!”

The seder grinds on. Ben recites the haggadah with everyone else but otherwise stays out of the conversation as much as possible. No one else particularly notices, he thinks, but every now and then he'll catch Claudia looking at him, just for a second at a time. He can't exactly figure out what her expression is. It kind of looks like she's found an extra puzzle piece in the jigsaw box, but long after she's completed the puzzle.

Ben takes his handful of bitter herbs with everyone else and tries not to think about it too much.

 

The festivities don’t properly wind down until closer to midnight, long after the kids have been put to bed, but Ben finds himself awake again soon after, jolted out of a dream with the panicked knowledge that he’s late to work. He takes a second to breathe - the dream is already fading, but he remembers frantically driving to the station, only to arrive as it caught fire…

There’s a stillness to the air that seems wildly out of place. He’s alone in one of Bubbe’s guest rooms, a privilege only granted due to him having the youngest baby with him. Half the family has gone back to Allie and her husband’s house, only fifteen minutes away, while he, Betty, Mandy, and Claudia’s family remain.

“Girls only!” Claudia had said as Daniel left, and winked at Ben when he pretended to be offended instead of pleased.

So the house is quiet, by virtue of it being two in the morning, mostly, but also because it’s been a long time since he’s been in any room of this house that isn’t the bathroom without another person. Making conversation, making a fuss, even just generally existing in his space - he’s been classically conditioned to expect other people around him, constantly, and without that he’s flailing.

It doesn’t help that he also hasn’t slept alone in his own room at home for more than a night at a time in years.

He tosses and turns for another few minutes, trying in vain to go back to sleep despite being wide awake, until he hears a familiar little snuffle. “Hey, Bebe,” he murmurs, rolling over to look at the ancient crib dragged in from the garage. Bebe’s thrown off her blanket and is watching him with wide eyes. She snuffles again.

“Yeah, it’s one of those nights,” Ben sighs. He sits up and stretches, giving up on sleep for now. “Let’s take a walk, huh? You hungry?”

Bebe thinks about this, in the same deep way she contemplates most things. “Milk,” she finally agrees. Ben gives her a bright smile.

“Yeah, let’s get some milk.”

The kitchen is just as strange to be in as the bedroom, it turns out. His first visit at age fourteen left him too young to run underfoot of anyone cooking, but he remembers hiding in here from his auntie's small talk, being banished to washing up duty with various cousins, sneaking in at midnight to not-so-covertly gorge on leftovers. His metabolism made the college years rough.

And yet even then, the sounds of people sleeping on air mattresses in the living room had followed him. Now it's just… quiet.

“Snack time, snack time,” he sings under his breath, balancing Bebe on his hip as he grabs the soy milk from the fridge and sets her favourite sippy cup on the bench. He's kind of a pro at preparing snacks one-handed by now, but even so, it's a little hard to undo the lid with his admittedly weak fingers. They're trained for pushing buttons and adjusting levels, not the hard labour of opening twist-caps. “Here, you wanna sit down for a second?”

Bebe nods, and Ben places her gently on the kitchen counter, as far from the edge as possible. “Don't move,” he says in his best stern voice. She giggles. He's never going to be an authority in his own family. “I'm serious, I'll tickle you if you move.”

“Okay,” she says happily, either understanding of the punishment or willing to take the risk. He keeps an eye on her as he opens the bottle and carefully pours it, either way. “Where's Baba?”

His movements slow. “He's back home, with Mommy and Pop,” he tells her. “We'll see them again super soon, yeah?”

“Now?” Bebe asks. This is more than she's spoken all day, practically - he'd almost thought she'd go into a full-on introversion shut-down like Sammy has on occasion, but it's good to know she bounces back quickly.

“Soon,” Ben promises. “We're here tomorrow, and then the next day we'll be home.”

Bebe contemplates this. Her vocabulary isn't huge for her age, so sometimes it's hard to tell how much information she takes in and understands, but this seems to reach her. “Okay,” she says again, although much less happily. Ben coos as screws the lid back on the cup and and puts it aside.

“Aw, you miss Baba,” he says. Bebe nods quickly. “Me too. You know what Baba would do if he were here, though?” Bebe gives him an adorably expectant look, as if he's gonna pull Sammy out of his pocket with a flourish just for her. “He'd do _this!”_

And he scoops her up, laughing as she shrieks quietly, holding her above his head by her armpits. “I'm not as tall as Baba,” he says, overly apologetic, “but do you wanna go up?”

“Yeah!” Bebe shouts. Ben shushes her and she giggles.

“Do you wanna go up?” Ben repeats, whispered this time.

“Yeah!” Bebe replies, also whispering. Ben gives her a kiss on the cheek before counting off, _3, 2, 1!_ and tossing her gently into the air.

She’s only out of his hands for a second, maybe an inch higher than before, but Bebe still shrieks like she's on a rollercoaster. Ben finds himself laughing too. He was never exactly lacking in wonder and enthusiasm for the world around himself, but Bebe surpasses him by far, and it makes everything brighter and more exciting for him, too. Emily's talked about that, too, about how she'd thought giving new information to library patrons kept her seeing the world with fresh eyes. As it turns out, introducing someone to the marvel that is birdwatching books doesn't hold a candle to Bebe's intense love for whatever new experience each day brings.

He tosses her twice before pulling her back into a hug and kissing her cheek again. “Okay, okay, quiet time,” he says over her giggles. She clutches his shirt in one chubby fist and puts her other hand over her mouth obediently. Giggles still leak out, but it's the thought that counts. “Good girl. You want your milk now, or do you want more quiet time?”

Her giggles taper off as she thinks it over. “Milk now,” she decides. Ben hands her the cup and she grasps it with both hands, leaving Ben to have his own quiet time.

Or so he thinks. “That's adorable,” a voice says from the doorway, and Ben curses louder than advisable as he turns. Claudia is rubbing her eyes and wearing a ridiculous set of rainbow tie-dyed pants with a plain tank top, and when she lowers her hands the look she gives him is one of affectionate exasperation. He shushes Bebe while Claudia grabs a glass from the cupboard.

“Absolutely we're adorable, but you didn't have to get up at ass o'clock to tell us that,” he says.

“Ass,” Bebe repeats. Ben rolls his eyes.

“Isn't it milk time?” he asks her, and she happily goes back to her sippy cup. Claudia snorts.

“She's a lot chattier now,” she says. “Normally I can't get Val to shut up. Not that I'd want to, but it gets a little much at bedtime, y'know? Is Bebe the same way?”

“She's not really a talker most of the time,” Ben replies. He leans back against the counter and sighs, tiredness leaking back in now that Bebe is more settled. “If she wakes up in the night like this she always wants to chat, but most of the time she keeps it quiet. But I'm pretty sure it's just for now. I mean, she has three parents in radio, so she--”

It's the stillness of the kitchen, the uneasiness that it brings. It makes him want to fill the room up with sounds, even if he has to do it all himself, and the words trip off his tongue before his sleepy brain can catch up.

For a few seconds he doesn't look at Claudia, just fusses with Bebe's hair. Hangs onto the silence while he can.

“It's fine,” Claudia says, very quietly. Ben still doesn't look at her, engrossed in tucking one particular curl behind Bebe's ear and making it stay. “You were just like this when you came out to me, you know,” she continues. “You could barely even look at me. I figured someone must've reacted the wrong way, for you to hide like that.”

“It's just,” Ben whispers, then breaks off. It shouldn't be this hard to talk about, but honestly, he's never really had to. Everyone in the town who matters had just listened in from night to night and pieced it together without him having to explain a damn thing. He clears his throat and says, louder, “I wasn't expecting the whole family to latch onto the whole thing. Like, I figured they'd know I was married to Emily, and that'd be it. Totally didn't expect the third degree about Sammy. Honestly, I didn't think you guys'd even remember him.”

“The guy you went on about two Passovers in a row like the sun shone out of his ass?” Claudia says.

“I talk about Emily the same way,” Ben says, not even bothering to deny it. “And I told everyone I was dating her, last time.”

Claudia just shrugs. “That's kind of the problem,” she tells him. “Look, I'm pretty sure I got it, but… this is a polyamoury thing, not a cheating thing, yeah?”

“Absolutely the first thing, yeah,” Ben says hurriedly, and the tension that filled him when he first misspoke leaves him in a dramatic rush. He'd known that Claudia had figured it out, but it's still a relief to have it out in the open. “I… yeah. That.”

“I'm not an expert,” Claudia begins, but Ben interrupts with a shake of his head.

“No one is,” he says, and gives a forced laugh. “It's, uh, it's like Mandy's asexual thing, right? No one really knows about it. Or they do, but they don't get it, so they say stupid stuff. Hell, I'm not an expert, I literally only realised it was a, a _thing_ about three years ago, so like… I wasn't gonna say anything. I didn't _want_ anyone to know. But I kind of got used to everyone at home knowing about us, so I just… forgot?”

“You forgot how to _not_ talk about it?” Claudia asks. Ben shrugs helplessly. “Wow, Ben, that's both super sweet and _super_ dumb.”

“Thanks?” Ben says, at the same time Bebe whacks him in the chest with her sippy cup. “Shit, uh, sorry, Bebe. Gimme a sec,” he tells Claudia, taking the cup and putting it on the sink. “Hey, Bebe, we're gonna have a boring grown-up talk. Do you want to stay, or go back to bed?”

As with all things, Bebe considers her options very seriously. “Stay,” she decides.

“Okay, but it's still quiet time,” Ben tells her, and she nods. “Good girl.” He kisses her on the head and shifts her from his hip to his arms with the certain knowledge that she'll be asleep within minutes.

Claudia watches this moment with that same affectionate look. Ben rolls his eyes and punches her shoulder to shake her out of it. “What?” she complains.

“Come on, you wouldn't want me looking at you all sappy when you're just looking after Valerie,” he says. “Just because we're in the oversharing part of the night, doesn't mean you get to look at me like I'm a, a mama duck or something.”

“You are a mama duck,” Claudia says. Ben punches her again. “Ow, okay, whatever! Excuse me for being nice. You want me to tell you that you're going to hell for your polygamous ways?”

“Isn't polygamy still technically legal under Jewish law?” Ben counters. “I mean, probably not if you wanted two husbands, but…”

“Shit, so it is two guys? Sammy and that other one?” Claudia says, looking delighted. “Damn, Ben, you really went for the bi stereotype award, huh?”

“Shut the fuck up, you're literally wearing a rainbow right now,” Ben says, and Claudia laughs.

“Okay, whatever,” she says with a grin, ruffling his hair. He'd slap her away if he didn't have both arms supporting Bebe right now, so instead he just scowls. Claudia glances down at Bebe and her grin softens - as predicted, she's fallen asleep. “She really does look a lot like you,” she says, quieter now. “Guess that's nice, huh? Uh, knowing that she's yours?”

It takes a few seconds for Ben to get what she means, but when it clicks, he kicks her shin and glares while she tries to muffle a yelp. “What, what?”

“Don't be gross, it's not like that!” he snaps, trying to kick her again only for her to hop out of reach. She scowls and rubs her shin.

“You haven't told me fuck-all about what it's like,” she grumbles. “What am I supposed to know? I'm the Cooper family LGBT encyclopedia, not the fuckin’ Ben Arnold guidebook. So come on, tell me about it, then.”

Ben squints at her as she straightens up and leans against the counter next to him. “Really?” he asks, still suspicious. She waves a hand at him.

“I'm already awake,” she says. Then, with more sincerity, “I woke you up that one time to talk your ear off for an hour about how I was gonna propose to Bella. I figured I owed you some time.”

Ben continues to scrutinise her. “And I wanna know more so I find these guys on Facebook and message them for embarrassing stories about you,” she admits. There it is. “That's like, bring your partner to Passover tradition! I'm so not letting you skip out on it, not when Auntie Trisha told Bella the beetroot story this afternoon.”

Ben laughs, quiet enough not to wake Bebe, but genuine. He can almost picture it - Emily cooing over the book of baby photos Bubbe would haul out, Sammy being coaxed out of hiding in the kitchen with promises of some truly humiliating teenage Ben stories, and Jack holding court at the seder table with the latest of King Falls’ truly ridiculous phenomena. The image is hazy, knowing how unrealistic it is that it could ever happen, but the light rush of freedom it brings is undiminished.

“Maybe next time I’ll bring someone,” he tells her, and it’s not a brush-off, not at all. It’s almost a promise.

He only thinks about what he should say, how he should say it, for about three seconds before thinking, _fuck it_. Not thinking has worked out kind of well for him so far, right?

“I met Sammy first, and Emily like, two weeks later, and I basically knew straight away that I didn't want to live without either of them,” he says finally. “And by the time I met Jack, I guess I’d figured out I didn't have to.”


End file.
